“We are seeing a lot of indications that the labor market slack, if not completely gone, is tightening,” said Natalie Mullis, the council’s chief economist.

The state’s official unemployment rate has fallen from 6.1 percent at the start of the year to 4.1 percent in November. The underemployment rate, which includes the unemployed as well as part-time workers who want full-time work and those who have given up looking but who would work if an opportunity became available, is also down.

The gap between the two measures has fallen from 7.2 percentage points in the months right after the recession ended in mid-2009 to 4.3 percentage points in the 12 months through September.

That spread is now closer to historical averages. And rising incomes are giving consumer spending a big boost.

Increases are showing up not only in the personal income and wage numbers, but also in the employment taxes the state is collecting.

“Our tax withholding revenue is growing quite swiftly,” Mullis said.

Wages are expected to prove most intense in those industries adding jobs at the fastest pace — corporate management, construction, state government, professional services and hospitality.

Colorado is also expected to see wage pressures several months before the national economy, where they probably won’t emerge until late 2015 or early 2016, the report predicted.

The Colorado Legislative Council’s forecast is contingent on oil prices, now in the mid-$50 range, moving back to $80 a barrel by next fall.

“If this holds true, production levels are unlikely to be significantly affected as active wells are still earning an acceptable rate of return,” the report said. But Mullis acknowledges that trying to pin down where oil prices will go is difficult.

Even if oil prices remain low, the industry isn’t as labor-intensive as in past decades, and it could take another six months for existing drilling activity to run its course, Mullis said.

Oil and gas activity is concentrated in northern Colorado, which has seen the fastest growth of any region. The expectation is for other sectors to absorb displaced workers.

The Colorado Legislative Council is calling for job growth in the state, which is tracking at 2.7 percent this year, to reach 3 percent following upward revisions. The expectation is that it will hold at that level next year as well.

Mullis said the state hasn’t experienced such strong job growth since the dot-com boom days in the late 1990s. Back then, the population was growing 3 percent to 4 percent a year.

Now it is growing only 1.7 percent, which will play a role into how quickly wage pressures could flare up.

Aldo Svaldi has worked at The Denver Post since 2000. His coverage areas have included residential real estate, economic development and the Colorado economy. He's also worked for Financial Times Energy, the Denver Business Journal and Arab News.

Today, one out of every three men imprisoned in Colorado -- and four out of every five women inmates -- say they have some type of moderate to critical mental health need, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections. The number of inmates with mental health needs in Colorado's prisons has steadily risen in the past two decades.

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